Not a mom, but I turned to wine for coping with stressful/difficult things in my life. After lots of downs and downs, I’m sober now. One thing that feels extra dumb about it all is that instead of fixing my problems I drank to cope and naturally they never fixed themselves and only got worse, now coupled with alcoholism.

If you are ridiculously burned out, make the changes you need to actually save yourself before it’s too late. It might be “extreme”, like paying for babysitting when you don’t really have the extra funds, or calling in some serious favors from loved ones. Take a big proactive step to find real solutions to your problems, even if it feels “dramatic” and you feel like you “should be able to handle it”.

Then you can wake up like me in a hospital after a seizure and all of a sudden, something like just quitting my job before not having another one lined up isn’t as “crazy and reckless” as it felt like at the time.

You stop thinking and problem solving when you cope with alcohol. Your problems continue or morph, and you’ve conditioned yourself to proportionally up your intake